


The Post-Ettarde Incident

by secace



Series: Caffè Arturiano [3]
Category: Arthurian Literature - Fandom, Arthurian Mythology, Arthurian Mythology & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, agravaine has a nice evening with his brothers, like he fucking deserves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:47:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23455756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secace/pseuds/secace
Summary: Nothing was embarrassing for Gawain, even things that should have been. He had coasted through the Ettarde incident with the smug confidence that made scandal fall from him like nothing. Gawain was unaffected by the many indelicacies of youth which plagued everyone else, and Agravaine, it seemed, especially.
Series: Caffè Arturiano [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2017424
Comments: 7
Kudos: 20





	The Post-Ettarde Incident

**Author's Note:**

> This is a follow up to rey (gawain-in-green) s fic The Ettarde Incident written by me, Secace, because I was going through it about Agravaine, as I so often am.

He could tell it was Gawain knocking on the door. Gaheris had sort of a shuffling way of announcing his presence, Mordred would just kick the door over and over till he relented, and Gareth would never willingly initiate interaction.

“Go fuck yourself,” Agravaine said, the petty victory of managing to get the words out without his voice breaking into tears again immediately overriden by the doorknob turning. 

“Don't-!” 

The door stopped moving, open only about an inch.

“Oh?” Gawain said, in that shitty tone of voice that conveyed both the smug grin on his face and the embarrassing implications. 

“Shut up, not everyone spends every waking hour,” He stopped, because his face was already an unflattering shade of vermillion, and wet from crying, and he couldn't, physically, talk about- well- without choking on the words.

“Jealous?”

He was. Of course he was, how could he not be. How could anyone look at him and his brother side by side and not find Agravaine overwhelmingly wanting. He was so green with jealousy he felt sick.

“Fuck off,” it came out more defeated than scathing, somehow, and the door opened, timed perfectly to swing closed behind Gawain without slamming in the frame. 

Gawain paused a moment to note the phone lying face down on the floor by the door, before crossing the room in two steps- it was technically a large storage closet into which a bed and desk had barely been crammed- and dropping down into the spinning chair next to the head of the bed. 

Agravaine would have told him that they had very different understandings of what 'fuck off,' meant, but he was busy looking for something to throw at his brother and simultantieously trying to look as if he hadn't been crying for the past hour. Failing at both those things, he turned toward the wall and pretended to fiddle with a stray thread on his sleeve. Gawain huffed a laugh behind him, and there was a creaking sound of the chair leaning back. Settling in for the long game, the bastard. 

“What do you want,” Agravaine said finally, surrender.

“Maybe I just came to admire the decor.”

There was, of course, no decor. There was a bed with plain white bedding, a desk with a neat stack of papers, a chair, and a dresser with plain and mostly ill fitting clothes. 

After a pause for response, which was not provided, he went on, “We're watching a movie in the den. You should join us, I burnt popcorn.”

“No thanks, youre just gonna make us watch that fucking five hour long BBC miniseries for the thousandth time.”

“Firstly,” Gawain sat up, the old chair creaking with the movement, “1995 Pride and Prejudice is fucking art. And secondly I was outvoted, so we're watching all the Twilight movies in reverse order.”

Agravaine blinked, confused enough to momentarily forget he was upset, “wait, why?”

“It's gonna be the touching story of a vampire that gets a divorce, becomes Mormon and moves to Arizona. It was Mordred's idea,” Gawain explained, clearly very amused at the concept.

“...huh.”

“It's gonna be great, you'll cry. I mean you cry at every movie, but you get the idea,” Gawain stood, thinking victory achieved.

“No, I don't,” he protested. 

“Aw, it's fine. It's not like you have to worry about being embarrassed in front of a date,” Gawain laughed, and really, he didn't mean anything by it. He never meant anything by it, or imagined his brother would remember comments like that longer then the time they took to say. That was how quickly Gawain forgot them, anyway.

“Fuck you,” Agravaine managed, despite the fact that the air had suddenly gone out of his lungs.

“I was just joking,” he said, testily, petulant with a guilty irritation at his words being taken to heart. No response.

“I'm sorry, how's that?” 

No response.

A longer pause. Two footsteps to the door like he was leaving but he only stopped in the entranceway. The temptation to turn around and see what he was doing had almost won, when Gawain announced it himself.

“Your phone screen isn't broken. I put it on charge.”

No response. 

“Look, I'm sorry alright. What's this about?”

Nothing.

“It was just a misunderstanding, I don't know why you're so upset about it. The whole thing's more embarrassing for me than you.”

It wasn't, of course. Nothing was embarrassing for Gawain, even things that should have been. He had coasted through the Ettarde incident with the smug confidence that made scandal fall from him like nothing. Gawain was unaffected by the many indelicacies of youth which plagued everyone else, and Agravaine, it seemed, especially.

“Fourteen months.”

“What?”

“That's how much older you are,” Agravaine explained, sitting up but still avoiding eye contact. Maybe his brother's momentary confusion had given him a burst of confidence.

“That's how much older you are than me, just fourteen months, so why did it make such a huge difference? Little over a year and you're,” he gestured at his brother, who was leaning up against the closed door with an unidentifiable expression, “and I-”

And sitting up had been a mistake. The deep down suspicion that his brother could tell he'd been crying was bad enough, but actually bursting into tears in front of him felt like cause to throw himself into a woodchipper. 

“Shit,” Gawain said. If he wasn't so miserable about everything else, Agravaine would have been pleased to see the stricken expression on his brother's face, like it was finally dawning that he'd been an asshole on and off for the past nineteen years of his life. 

“Aggs, I'm sorry,” He tried, taking a step to be standing next to the bed, “No one gonna remember any of this in a week, I promise.”

It was impossible to explain through sobs that it was his whole life that was the problem, so Agravaine didn't attempt it. Apparently deciding to ride this out, Gawain sat down next to him on the bed and waited. 

“If you don't calm down you'll make yourself sick again,” he noted after a few minutes.

“Shut up, I- I was eight,” Agravaine mumbled, from under the hands that held his face.

“Mom was so mad about her fancy fucking party,” Gawain chuckled, humorlessly, “Its on her for letting an eight year have so much wine.”

“...I guess.”

“Do you remember the rest of that night? We went out into the back garden and I sat with you till you calmed down.”

“Yeah, and you tried to kill an owl,” Agravaine said disparagingly, letting his hands fall to his lap to fix his brother with a judgemental look.

“I wasn't trying to kill the owl,” Gawain protested, “I was trying to catch it for a pet.”

Agravaine scoffed, “Whatever, sure.”

But he was smiling, shakily, because he remembered how his brother had gotten all scratched up from falling out of the tree and into a thorn bush, and they had to sneak back into the house through the bathroom window, so Agravaine could help him clean off the blood in the sink. They had sat on the nice granite counter, in the wee hours of the morning, and swore not to tell anyone, not even their younger brothers.

“I'm sorry,” Gawain said, for the third or fourth time, he'd lost track, “really, it's not a competition,” half meaning Ettarde, half meaning all of it.

“You can say that, you're winning. In every conceivable way.”

“You're taller,” Gawain pointed out, for lack of anything else to say. Agravaine stopped.

“Am I?”

His brother nodded, “by like an inch now, and you might still grow a tad. And you're better at math than I am- I'm failing my Calculus class right now. And you can follow a basic recipe without the kitchen ending up on fire.”

“I don't own shorts that say 'OSHA violation' on the ass,” Agravaine added.

“Yeah, see,” Gawain grinned, “Now you're getting into the spirit of things. I'm actually very lame. My brother is my best friend. Pathetic, right?”

“Wait- really?” _Which brother,_ he almost said, he was so startled.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Gawain shrugged, “All my other friends just want- you know.”

He shrugged again, to show how very much it didn't bother him.

“I- then you have to let me pick the movie,” Agravaine said, disbelieving.

“Sure,” Gawain stood, “We'll wait for you to be ready. I'll get you some water, you're probably super dehydrated.”

He opened the door, and the sounds of a good natured argument from the kitchen filtered through with the smell of burnt popcorn.

“Hey, Aggs?” He paused, halfway out the door.

“Yeah?”

“You should put up some posters or something. This room is fucking grim.”

“Oh, Fuck off!” Agravaine said. But he was laughing.

He panicked at the selection and picked some weird documentary about the Crimean War. In his defense, he'd never gotten to pick the movie before. If his brothers objected to this selection, Gawain had threatened them into silence about it, and if his brothers could tell he'd been crying, they didn't say anything.


End file.
